The Ghost Dragon's Daughter — Claire O'Dell

Mei, Lili, and Jun have just three weeks to complete their senior year project, a portable translation device they call the monstrosity machine, which runs on magic and mathematics.We only need to prove the concept, Mei tells her friends.Jun wants more than a passing grade, however. She wants that shiny golden insignia on her graduation certificate that says she's graduated with honors. With that, she's guaranteed a job in the best magic shops in Shēn Xiù City. And ai-ya, she needs that job if she ever wants to save enough money to study at university in the faraway Phoenix Empire.But getting their monstrosity to work proves to be more complicated than Jun ever predicted.The Ghost Dragon's Daughter is a classic stepping out into adventure story, with more twists and turns of classic tropes than the wonderful ghost dragon of the title has scales. There's magic and mathematics, spirit animals and science, and an intelligent young girl who is finding her path to university and love both longer and rockier than she'd expected. As in O'Dell's lovely River of Souls series, the characters are rich, the world building deft, and the prose a joy to read. --Delia Sherman, author of The Freedom MazeScience, spells, and spirit animals... This is exactly the lush worldbuilding and carefully crafted characterization readers saw in O'Dell's Fox & Phoenix, and the return ticket to this world was well worth the wait. --Lisa Mantchev, author of the Théâtre Illuminata series and STRICTLY NO ELEPHANTS